Siri versus Google Voice Search: Fight!

We asked each voice search 20 questions to see which gave the best results.

Voice-controlled smartphone searches are slowly becoming all the rage, thanks to tools like Apple's Siri and Google's "enhanced" voice search. While Google's technology has been available to Android users for some time, the company recently updated its native search app for iOS with its latest developments in contextual voice queries. For iOS users, this means there's now actual competition for what you use when you want to make quick lookups without your thumbs. So which one is better: Google or Siri?

We thought we'd ask both "apps" the kind of questions we'd find ourselves debating with friends (which usually results in someone whipping out a smartphone to look up the answer). We took 20 different questions, ranging from practical to less-than-practical, to see which one gave us the most useful answers. The goal was to ask questions in a casual way—after all, both Siri and Google are supposed to be able to read into the context of your question without too many specifics.

Both apps performed reasonably well, but there were many cases in which one gave a better answer than the other. Depending on what kinds of things you might ask Siri or Google, one may be superior. Read on and discover what's best for you (and chuckle at our attempts to get answers out of the two AI bots):

What is 72° Fahrenheit in Celsius?

Both apps returned accurate results to this query, and delivered them directly. This is an important point we'll run into later; not all queries were failures, but sometimes we had to go through extra effort to find the answer. For this one, the answer was simple. Both Siri and Google were able to tell us right away.

Winner: Draw

Who founded the Free Software Foundation?

As you can see above, Google won this one by giving us the answer right away. Siri could have directed us to the answer (that's what the "search the Web" option is for when Siri can't find out right away), but it would have required extra taps. We would've ended up at Google anyway.

Winner: Google

When does Les Misérables come out?

I was intentionally vague when asking this question, because I wanted to see if the apps could identify that I was talking about 1) a movie, and 2) a movie that hasn't yet been released (or at least, the latest version hasn't been released yet).

As you can see from the answers above, Siri clearly did understand that I was talking about a film and not the musical, but Siri didn't seem to know a new version of Les Misérables is coming out this December (even when I specified that I wanted the 2012 version). Google, on the other hand, knew that a version of Les Misérables is coming out this year, and it gave me the date I was looking for.

Winner: Google

When did Tim Cook become CEO of Apple?

Neither Siri nor Google was able to tell me the exact date when Apple announced Tim Cook as CEO (August 24, 2011). But Google was at least able to point me to the Wikipedia page about Tim Cook, and Siri wanted to point me to Apple's website.

Update: Readers have pointed out that Siri's result only takes you to Apple's home page, which is arguably less useful than a simple Google search. As a result, I'm updating the winner of this one...

Who painted the Mona Lisa?

Google was able to give me the answer right away with no extra clicks. Siri, on the other hand, wanted to send me to the Web. I'm surprised the answer to this one wasn't in Wolfram Alpha (which Siri can query), but regardless, Google had the more efficient result.

Winner: Google

What time does Bin Wine Café open?

For this query, Siri didn't quite understand what I was asking, but still provided me with the answer I was looking for. Google also provided me the answer I was looking for. Strangely, they report different times for when this restaurant opens. This is undoubtedly due to conflicting information sources; Siri pulls its data from Yelp, but it's unclear where Google pulls its info from (most likely its own restaurant listings). According to the restaurant's own website, it's open for "nosh" at 4pm and open for dinner at 5pm. I guess both answers are technically correct.

Winner: Draw

Where is Google's Chicago office?

I suspected this might be a difficult one for Siri to pull out, and I was right. Siri thought I was asking a completely different question and tried to give me my own Google Voice number that I have stored in my Contacts. Google, on the other hand, knew what I was asking and was able to provide the location of the company's office in Chicago.

Winner: Google

What goes into cheddar cheese?

Neither app was able to provide the answer directly to me without extra clicks. Siri would have required at least one extra tap compared to Google.

Winner: Draw

What is 300 pesos in American dollars?

This is a type of query that many of us find ourselves using when traveling. Both Siri and Google provided us the answer directly, but Siri offered extra details that might be useful. For instance, Siri provides the exchange rate history so we could see how things have changed over time.

Winner: Draw on the original question, with a slight lean towards Siri for extra contextual data

How old is Justin Bieber?

Well, how old is he?!? Both services gave me the correct answer, but Google provided Bieber's actual birth date in addition to his age. Siri, on the other hand, gave me an extremely specific age (18 years, 8 months, 12 days). While that information might be useful to someone, I suspect the birth date might be easier to grok.

Winner: Draw, with a slight lean towards Google for more useful contextual data

I expect Google to be better at search, but after I say 'find me a restaurant nearby...' , can you say 'book the reservation'? Or, after I ask ' When is Justin Beiber's birthday?', can I say 'Add that to my calendar'? Just curious if Siri's context awareness was tested at all.

For the "When did Tim Cook become CEO of Apple?" question, Siri seems to be pointing you towards apple.com, which probably *won't* have the answer you're looking for unless you can find the bio page of him buried in the PR section; I couldn't find a link, so I ended up searching the apple website for "Tim Cook" and had to scroll through the various tangentially related bits to find the Bio section. Much more frustrating than just a straight up search query with a link to his Wiki page at the top, which makes this one swing towards Google unless I'm missing something.

Don't you think it's really a matter of which questions you choose to ask the two services? Each has its strengths and weaknesses. Overall, though, I'd have to say that neither one is ready to be something to use every day. Before I really count on a service such as Siri, I want to feel confident that it's almost always going to deliver something useful and accurate for me. As it is right now, Siri seems more like an interesting proof of concept that will eventually be a service I can reliably depend on. Siri (and the Google equivalent) are novelties now, but will be quite useful one day, IMO.

Google should have gotten the points for the Tim Cook question since they included the right snippet of the wikipedia page right in the results. It says it right there in that paragraph "he was named the CEO of Apple on August 24, 2011."

I get that you were specifically looking for the singled out, specially formatted answers but this feels like it definitely should have gone to google since it got you the answer in 0 clicks.

Duh, of course Google is better at search, but Siri is much more than that. As lstroud said, you can follow up, both with more refined questions, and with actions. Search is just one of Siri's many features and this article is barely touching a quarter of Siri's usefulness.

I don't think this test proves much, as already mentioned, google is in disadvantage over sure being on an apple device, which which severely restrict device access. There have been plenty of demos (search on youtube) on google on a modern android device with v4.1 and iphone 5 with iOS 6. Quite frequently the android device is beating out iphone. Especially in non-quiet enviroments.As for translation into another language, try google translate (on an android device) it has a cool dictation feature and talks back in whole translated sentences.

That google search a.k.a. "voice actions" can do so much more, just youtube the demo for it. Which was made, what 2 years ago?

- In Olivia's market, Google gets no love for showing a map right away. Ditto for Bin Wine's, Google office...- in general, Google gets no love for including one-click away references. Specially for Tim Cooks career, that shoudl at least be a 'lean to" for google.

Am I honestly the only one who smiled just a bit at "which Siri can query?" I'm a sucker for a good rhyme.

Anyway, not having an iPhone, I can't say definitively how good Siri is. I've seen my friends use it and it seems to work very well. And I'd kill for the ability to set alarms and such by voice. Every morning, I like to push my alarm back by 20 minutes when it wakes me, and being able to use voice commands would be much appreciated. Alas, until my upgrade comes, I'll be staring into the blazing light of the sun every morning to change my alarm.

I have to be honest, I don't think they accomplish the same thing. Google's is just searching, but Siri is more of an automation framework.

huh?What do you think google is doing... it is pulling data from the "knowledge graph" based on your query...

To be fair, Siri doesn't seem to work on my Galaxy Nexus at all.

Google Voice Search is basically Google Now without the automation framework. And I agree, that automation makes it infinitely more useful. I'm sure I'd be using Siri over GV on iOS just for the ease of use.

Take a step back and look at why Google released this. 1) To get more search queries, 2) It shows iOS users how good the voice search is on android handsets.

Also, on the "When did Tim Cook become CEO of Apple?" question. The answer is right there in the visible text of the first search result. There wasn't a card, but you did get the answer without needing further clicks.

There's one other major caveat for iOS users, too. Unlike Google's app, Siri is able to perform a number of other actions on your iOS device—setting timers, making calendar appointments, creating reminders, sending texts or tweets, making calls, and so on. These are things Google's app can't do, undoubtedly because Apple restricts third-party applications from being able to perform many of those functions.

This is really key: Siri or Google as "verbal search engine" always struck me as a parlor trick. Is it really that much easier than opening a web browser and entering a more focused query manually? Then you remove one algorithmic layer (the voice translation) and a chance for misinterpretation, especially when you're looking for a single, specific answer.

Siri (or Google's equivalent offering in Android) is far more useful in how it allows you to accomplish specific tasks that would otherwise be harder to do the "traditional" way: Sending a text while driving (or feeling your phone buzz in your pocket and having the voice assistant read the incoming text), walking down the street and remembering to set a reminder or schedule an appointment, dictate an e-mail, etc. These, in my mind, are the more useful and interesting uses of voice assistants. A more interesting comparison would be to demonstrate the accuracy and utility of Google's system versus Siri at doing tasks like this on equivalent Android and iPhone hardware.

While I don't buy into the pro / anti-skeuomorphic debate generally, I think this is a case where that design choice suffers. I don't have Siri, but between the two depicted here, it seems Google does a better job of putting the most relevant information front and center, where Siri makes you read line by line through the faux printed sheet, with no visual hierarchy to really discern the most relevant bit. And in a couple cases (as neglected by the author regarding hungarian for "cat"), I found finding that answer in secondary Google results no less difficult to cull than Siri's.

I would agree that Siri probably works better in the context of the iOS environment, but I think Google is on the better track on how to present that information.

I have to be honest, I don't think they accomplish the same thing. Google's is just searching, but Siri is more of an automation framework.

Huh? Has Apple announced plans to expose Siri functionality or API's to third party developers?

It seems Apple hasn't, nor has Google. This means they are both the exact same thing-- parlor tricks. Until third party developers can integrate with it, they are just applications that hold positions in their OS's far beyond their merit. For comparison, Nuance has worked for years on voice frameworks.

Siri could have greatly reduced Google's advantage here by showing the first couple of results in the answer, allowing a person to, for example, check Wikipedia right there without the extra clicks. I doubt Google would expose such information to a high-volume service like Siri--especially to a direct competitor--without some licensing fees, though.

That doesn't fix the #1 problem people have with Siri in the real world though (speed and availability), but would make it much more useful for those times when you're not sure whether or not Siri will have a direct answer.

I think if you ask Google to define the word love it should work. There are slight differences in the way you have to ask the question to get the desired answer. I am an Android user but I do like how Wolfram Alpha gives a little extra info on certain items and would like to see it in the Google results!

I heard that Siri was much better in IOS6. I wasted no time pitting my wife's nexus s vs my iPhone 4S and iPad 3rd gen.

My results were similar to 6 months ago (per IOS6). Google works noticeably better for my family (inc kids) than Apple does. I suspect that it may be a non-American accent that's the problem. Typically, if Siri couldn't understand me the first time, it usually didn't understand the second time either. I estimate that Google had an accuracy if about 90% or higher, and Siri at about 75%.

As an example, "how do I get a better voice for Siri" returned statements about a prostitute, another time about Haddaway (the singer), then it finally got it. Background noise didn't figure in the equation as Siri (when it worked) worked in noisy conditions.

This is two for two from my tests in favour of Google.Like anything, your mileage may vary. My wife had less success with Google than I did

Duh, of course Google is better at search, but Siri is much more than that. As lstroud said, you can follow up, both with more refined questions, and with actions. Search is just one of Siri's many features and this article is barely touching a quarter of Siri's usefulness.

The purpose of this comparison is to see which of the two does contextual voice queries better.